Royal Palace of Naples

Royal Palace of Naples tickets: on a card, or with a guide and a walk

Palace entry comes with the Campania Artecard and the Naples Museum Card, in the next section, and there’s no need to book. Visitors under 18 get in free.

With a guide, the tour we sell costs €31.50, and it has its own option for under-18s at checkout. It lasts two and a half hours, includes your entry to the palace, goes in small groups and can be cancelled until 24 hours ahead. It was designed for cruise passengers, and the walk doesn’t end at the palace: the guide also takes you past Castel Nuovo, the Galleria Umberto arcade and the Teatro San Carlo, through the old Borgo Santa Lucia and along the seafront, finishing at Castel dell’Ovo. Check the guide’s language when you book.

The palace opens its doors to everyone for free on the first Sunday of the month. On those days the hanging garden and L’ascensore del Re, a video installation, are closed, and the museum of Enrico Caruso, the Neapolitan tenor, lets people in by the hour, 30 at a time.

The tour is listed as unsuitable for wheelchairs, though the palace itself is step-free on the main floor.

The Royal Palace of Naples on the Artecard, and the sums

The Campania Artecard 365 Lite gives you one entry here and one at each of the other state sites on its list, for a year from the first. The sums are quick: our tickets for Pompeii (€27.50) and the Archaeological Museum (€24) already come to more than the card’s €31, before you count the palace, Capodimonte and the two castles.

The Naples Museum Card, seven days from first use, includes the palace as well, along with Castel Nuovo, a few hundred metres away. The Naples City Card and the Naples City Center Pass don’t, and the rest of the comparison is on Naples Pass and Naples city passes.

What’s closed in the Royal Palace, and the hanging garden

Since 1 October the Hall of Mirrors, the Hall of Hercules and part of the Still Life room have been closed while their furniture is restored, with no date to reopen, and the route goes round them through room XX. During the Casa Corriere festival, from 4 to 8 November 2026, the First Antechamber and the court theatre are partly closed as well.

Of the palace’s gardens, the Giardino Romantico is free to walk into, but the Giardino Pensile, the hanging garden, isn’t part of the standard entry: it takes a separate €2 ticket on top. The garden is visited with a member of staff at 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, 15:00 and 16:00, every day except Wednesdays and free days, and the garden can close when there’s a weather alert. Work is under way on its sides facing Piazza del Plebiscito and Via Acton.

Royal Palace of Naples hours, and how long to give it

The royal apartment takes about an hour, by the palace’s own reckoning, and the Caruso museum and the building’s museum on the ground floor add to that. Keep the Caruso for the morning, because it closes at 14:00.

The Museo Caruso, in the palace’s old coach house, has the tenor’s costumes, records and gramophones, and recordings you can listen to. The National Library, in the east wing since 1924, is a separate institution and not part of the visit.

Lifts run up to the main floor, and there are adapted toilets, wheelchairs to borrow and a tactile route, booked on 081 5808418. Rooms can be out of reach for a while, so if you need step-free access, ask before you go in.

Up the grand staircase: the court theatre and the Throne Room

You come in through the Cortile d’Onore, the main courtyard. On the ground floor, the Museo della Fabbrica tells the building’s story with models of the palace from 1811 and around 1840, and from there the Scalone d’Onore, the grand staircase, climbs to the main floor, with an exhibition of the viceroys’ ceramics on the way up.

The court theatre comes early on the route, its ceiling redone after the bombing of 4 August 1943. Then come three antechambers, the first with a ceiling by the painter Francesco De Mura, and the Throne Room, where the restored throne returned on 10 February 2026. Its ceiling, by Antonio De Simone, shows the 12 provinces of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the Bourbon kingdom of southern Italy.

Further on, look out in the Flemish room for a musical machine that Charles Clay made in 1730. Along the same stretch, Belisario Corenzio frescoed the gallery and Battistello Caracciolo the room of the Gran Capitano, the King’s study has Parisian furniture from Murat’s reign, and the Queen’s rooms are hung with Luca Giordano, Farnese pieces and still lifes.

Viceroys, Bourbons and Murat: who lived in the Royal Palace

Domenico Fontana began the palace in 1600 for the Spanish viceroys, and after the revolt of 1647 the architect Picchiatti designed its monumental staircase. The Bourbon kings moved in from 1734, and from 1808 to 1815 it was the palace of Joachim Murat, the French king Napoleon gave Naples.

Most of what you see dates from after a fire in 1837, when Gaetano Genovese rebuilt it. The Savoys took it over in 1861, and in 1919 King Vittorio Emanuele III gave it to the state, which opened the royal apartment that year. The statues of the eight kings on the front, from Roger II to Vittorio Emanuele II, went up in 1888.

Getting to the Royal Palace on Piazza del Plebiscito

Metro line 1, or line 6, to Municipio leaves you a short walk from the palace, and the cruise terminal is close by. The Teatro San Carlo stands next door, and Castel Nuovo is a few hundred metres away.